Like everything in health, optimal nutrition is individual. There is no diet
that is right for everyone. Your diet interacts with your environment and your
genes, your exercise and your relationships to produce the body that you live
in.

While I often recommend special diets for people based on their circumstances
and needs, I never suggest people go on a temporary weight reduction diet. I
believe the people who need to lose weight do better if they undertake permanent
lifestyle changes.

Human diets have changed radically in the past 200 years. We no longer
use our bodies for survival, and we no longer eat food that we've gathered
ourselves. Both of these factors have contributed significantly to chronic
health problems in our country.

Over the past 40 years scientists learn that increased incidence of
cholesterol contributes to heart disease. They made the logical conclusion that
diets high in saturated fats are responsible for high cholesterol levels and
should be avoided. In response Americans have lowered the fat content of their
diets and the food industry has created many low-fat products. Unfortunately,
the solution wasn't so simple. As we have replaced fats in our diets with lower
fat foods, we've increased our consumption of carbohydrates. We now know that
not all fats are problematic and in fact eating a low-fat diet that is high in
simple carbohydrates can lead to health problems.

Carbohydrates

Unfortunately, many people, following the advice of their doctors, replaced
saturated fats in their diet with simple carbohydrates, which we now know leads
to increased insulin resistance increased heart disease and other degenerative
conditions. Many of our dietary staples are highly refined foods that we easily
convert into sugar. Highly refined foods are foods that have been altered in
factories. In refining, the parts that cause them to go bad and to have
color are usually removed. This means that the fats and the fiber are
removed, along with most of the nutritional content. Most breads and
cereals rice and pastas have been refined. Eating high amounts of these
foods creates significant health challenges, especially to people who are having
trouble with insulin resistance or the metabolic syndrome. Eating
large amounts of carbohydrates leads to excessive body fat. I will
try to explain why:
When we eat foods that contain a lot of carbohydrate, the sugars from these
foods enter our bloodstream. Our bodies release insulin to transport these
sugars into our tissues, where they can either be used to meet our current
energy needs, or stored as fat for later use. If we consistently over eat such
carbohydrates, our bodies continue to produce large amounts of insulin, which
changes our metabolism. Our metabolism changes from one that prefers
energy storage to energy use. The consequence of this is that we
feel low energy, we gain fat, and we crave high carbohydrate foods. This
familiar pattern is known to be associated with many degenerative diseases,
particularly heart and blood vessel disease.

The Glycemic Index

We now have a system for evaluating foods in terms of how much they cause
your blood sugar to rise. Foods are rated according to a standard with glucose
being given a score of 100. Foods with a glycemic index greater than 60 are
considered to have a high glycemic index, and to challenge your body's ability
to handle them using insulin. Whole-grain foods have higher glycemic indices and
processed foods. It's containing added sugar as well as juices alcoholic
beverages, pastas, potatoes,also have high glycemic indices. Most non-root
vegetablesin addition to being loaded with nutrients, have low glycemic indices,
and make good choices for people with insulin resistance, diabetes or desire to
lose weight.
Fats

Carbohydrates and proteins that we eat are broken down and then transported
as smaller molecules into our tissues. in contrast, fats in our diet are usually
incorporated directly into our cell membranes and used by the body in the form
in which they are eaten. In the case of fat, you are almost literally what you
eat. Fats are divided into two groups: saturated fats which tend to be stiff
fats and when incorporated into your body give the cell membranes shape and
form, and fluid fats which are in general unsaturated and when incorporated into
our body, give the membranes their essential fluidity. The easy way to tell
saturated from unsaturated fats is that saturated fats are solid at room
temperature and unsaturated fats are liquid.

Saturated fat

Although some saturated fats is essential, most Americans get far too much.
We need to limit our intake of these by choosing lower fat meats and dairy
products.

Unsaturated fats

These are falso called polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. These fats
are more fluid and are found in fish, particularly cold-water fish, nuts and
seeds such as flax seeds and some grains such as canola. A word of warning here
– most unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and should be kept in the
fridge to avoid spoiling. because unsaturated fats easily become rancid, the
food processing industry, in an attempt to make unsaturated fat more available
to us, have changed them chemically. these chemically altered oils are called
partially hydrogenated. unfortunately, the process hydrogenation produces oils
that are toxic. The American Academy of science now says that there is no safe
consumption of these oils. these oils are also referred to as having trans-fats.
Very few Americans get enough unsaturated fats in our diet. Most of us increase
our intake of polyunsaturated fats (essential fats) such as fish oil and flax
seed oil in our diets to improve the fluidity of our membranes and the
performance of our bodies signalling substances.

Protein

Because in the past most Americans ate most of their protein in the form of
fatty meat, in our quest to reduce saturated fat in our diet we inadvertently
reduced protein. Protein,which is essential to good health, is broken down to
amino acids in our body. We use amino acids for building structural body
parts like muscles and also for our detoxification systems, which can consume as
much as 80% of our body’s energy. Because protein foods such as meat, dairy and
nuts usually also contain fat, we have misguidedly tried to avoid them in recent
years. We now know that this approach was mistaken. Studies at Tufts
University in Boston by Rosenberg and Evans have listed muscle mass and muscle
strength as the two most important indicators of healthy aging. It is important
therefore to eat enough protein to maintain or grow muscle mass.

Fiber Fiber is the part of your food that goes through your body without being
absorbed. as humans moved towards a diet high in refined carbohydrates over the
past 200 years, our consumption of dietary fiber has decreased radically. This
is not to be associated with increased incidence of colon cancer. increase fiber
the diet is also known to help prevent diabetes, lower serum cholesterol, and
help rid the body of toxins. Sources of dietary fiber.

Healthy eating
Most of us can improve our health radically by improving our nutrition. Although
there is not one diet that is perfect for everyone, in general for people
desiring weight loss, I think that the South Beach diet is excellent. For people
who want to lose weight rapidly but safely, the Institute for Functional
Medicine has designed a Protein Sparing Diet.